


Descent Into Madness

by MiniMoffat37



Category: Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Violence, Other, PTSD, Serial Killers, Sexual Violence, Trauma, Violent Thoughts, a lot of fucking violence, abuse of like everything, probably as creepy as the silence of the lambs, psychopaths, so much fucking violence, violence of every kind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:11:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3665178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniMoffat37/pseuds/MiniMoffat37
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This actually isn't MCU, or anything at all. This is about my original character, Lee Scarr, who was birthed in a fandom-flex verse on twitter role playing. (He currently has two accounts, twitter.com/SpawnOfVile and twitter.com/ChaosOfForce.) It's based loosely off of The Silence Of The Lambs. Basically, this is a story told from the point of view of The Agent about how Lee came to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Interview

“Has anyone ever called you insane?” the quiet voice in the dark room asked you. You remain seated and calm. You’re an agent. You deal with the sickest cases. You have nerves of steel and nothing. Ever. Scares. You.

But these eyes do.

They’re blue, on a scarred face, bright and mad over a quirky mouth upturned in a smirk. Lee Scarr is who owns them. Lee Scarr, the British assassin. Lee Scarr, the last of a long line of psychopathic killers. He has an impressive lineage. And today his lineage ends.

“We have enough evidence on you to lock you away for at least seventeen lifetimes,” you say calmly. “You can save yourself. Just give us the address.”

Lee blinks at you hazily.

“If I told you my story, you wouldn’t want to know the address,” he says softly. Oh, he is so soft spoken. There’s a chill that descends on the room when he speaks. It settles in your bones, makes it impossible to look away from those eyes, those lips. You don’t find him sexually attractive, though he could pass for a model with scars the world would find sexy. No, he’s too terrifying to be attractive, too mad and unchained.

“We need to know where it is, Lee,” you reply, just as softly. “We need to know if it was all your fault.”

Finally, finally those terrifying eyes look away from yours and wander to the slit of a window. He seems peaceful for a moment, calm and rested. It’s almost horrifying.

“Of course it was all my fault,” he says. For a moment it seems like he’s speaking bitterly, but it’s just a passing moment. “It always is. Always the child. Always. That’s what parents say, isn’t it?”

A chill runs down your spine. You are very well aware that at any moment he could pop open those handcuffs and kill you with a blow. This quiet calm is unnerving. You can’t follow his moods, what’s going through his head.

“I wasn’t always crazy,” he adds thoughtfully. “I know you think I am, but I’m remarkably well-adjusted.”

At this you sit forward. Yes. He’s finally giving you something. Could it be? Ever since you had this case, you would read through all of his crimes and you could see a sliver of humanity there, a sliver you could never find in the rest of his family’s files. He always made sure to spare the innocents the horrors of his work. He always took the kids away before slaying their parents. He was never excessive, never cruel.

Except with his father.

His father…

“Why did you kill your father?” you ask him. Lee turns that head of his to you, a strange tilt to it as he fixes his eyes on you.

“Why do you ask? He’s the one death that didn’t hurt anyone,” he replies. That is disturbing. It’s almost like he was looking at the death of a family member as just another job. This prompts another question.

“Was it a job?”

Lee opens his mouth and laughs, long and hard. For a moment terror strikes you, but you struggle to maintain your composure as he gathers his. He has such a rich laugh. You feel as though there are layers and layers to it, secrets and pain over thick amusement that no one could ever begin to understand.

“There are many who would pay for it,” he finally says. “But, no. It was not a job. It was because I wanted to.”

He wanted to.

He just wanted to kill his own father.

You stare at him for several moments, confused. Should you be repulsed? Should you be curious? Should you leave the room?

Pictures. You can show him pictures.

“What about these?” you ask as you lay out pictures of some of his uncorrupted victims before him. “Did you want to kill these, too?”

“Are you trying to find my motive, agent?” he asked mildly, but you notice he doesn’t look at the pictures. Rather, he refuses to and only rests his eyes on you. Good. He still has some aversion to his sins. “I thought money was the only motive you need.”

“It may be the only motive a judge needs, but I have a feeling it wasn’t the only motive you needed,” you respond. You know there has to be more to this story. The Scarrs have been around for centuries. Uncovering their family home can reveal so much. You know you need to find it, but only Lee can provide the location. Agents in your division to this day are still haunted by the cases of the Scarrs, by the brutality and cruelty exemplified in their work. You caught one. You owe it to the haunted men and women to provide them with explanations to the hacked up corpses, the acid, the poisons so grotesque agents have hung up their boots and left the force altogether. The good guys deserve to know.

And, of course, there is always the mystery of why the Scarr children go missing.

You need to know.

Lee stays still for a moment, eyes locked on the wall behind you.

“Why must you pry?”

His voice is barely a whisper in the still room, his eyes haunted and sad. He could be manipulating you. He could be directing you to his own end. He could be doing any number of things. Eyes can lie.

“Because your family has horrified us for centuries and we need to know why.”

Perhaps that statement was blunt. But you know Lee appreciates honesty. He has to, being a liar himself.

“Some things are better left secrets,” he says. You nearly scream in frustration. You know there’s a shred of humanity in him. There has to be. It’s somewhere, somewhere dear to him. Perhaps you’re too much of an optimist. Perhaps you’re too quick to forgive, but you need to know.

“And some things should be aired out,” you snap and he smiles. It’s a wolfish one, slow and cruel.

“Do you have nightmares, agent?”

That smug ass. He knows.

“After your file?” Your hard eyes lock with his. “Every night.”

The smile widens.

“I offer you a deal,” he stated and leaned back in his chair. “You read my journal. In its entirety. I will give you the coordinates to various bits of it. If you can manage it, then I will divulge the location of the ancestral home.”

Yes.

That is perfect.

And yet… The look in his eyes tells you that you may be in over your head. But you don’t care. You need. To know.

“Deal,” you say firmly.

It can’t be that bad. Not compared to what you have seen. Not compared to the man hung by his own intestines from a chandelier courtesy of Lee’s father. Or the woman who had been sliced in two and butterflied out like a shrimp, thanks to Lee’s uncle. Or the man boiled alive. Or the girl drowned in the blood of her parents.  
It’s sick, but when you saw the decapitated body, Lee’s first kill, you had been so relieved that one existed that killed as quickly as he had managed it. The corpse had given you hope that all was not lost, that maybe one day you could understand.

For a split second, though, when you stared at Lee, you couldn’t help but feel that you would never see a breath of goodness in those crazed eyes.

God, how you hoped you were wrong.


	2. 1994

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are taken to the very first place, the scene where Lee's nightmare truly began, and it's already a question of whether or not you can continue.

June 23rd, 1994  
I turned six today. Bailey didn’t smile. Neither did Cameron. Papa did, though! Momma hid in her room again and Papa gave me this journal. He says if I wanna be a REAL Scarr I have to keep it, like Cameron and Bailey do! I wanna be a real Scarr like them, too! Cameron gave me a knife. She looked sad, though. She didn’t use to look sad like that… I wonder if her boyfriend broke up with her. It’s okay. I get to play with Jamie later!

June 24th, 1994  
I don’t understand. Guns are loud. Jamie is gone. Papa says I have to write about how I feel. Red isn’t my favorite color anymore. My hands feel funny. I feel really sad. He says I won’t soon. He says real Scarrs don’t feel sad and real Scarrs don’t have bad grammar. We’re going home soon. I want my bed.

 

You sit back after struggling through the childish handwriting scrawled onto the pages. Who is Jamie? Where is the rest of the journal? From what forensics have gathered over the year, each journal is specifically made with three hundred and sixty five pages, with sixty-six for leap years. From one birthday to the next. Not that anyone has ever been able to analyze them before they go missing.

You chew your lip and look around the abandoned basement. It was strange that he would hide such a thing here. It was almost like he knew that he would be caught, or as though he was setting himself up.

You turn back to the pages, reading over them again. It doesn’t surprise you that Cameron, who also went missing years ago, gave a six year old kid a knife. But who is this Jamie? And why is he relevant?

Guns are loud, little Lee had said. I feel sad. It was almost like Jamie had been executed. Red isn’t my favorite color anymore. Had Jamie been a bodyguard that knew too much? Perhaps Jamie had tried to save Lee from the fate imposed upon him. It seemed a logical conclusion.

You look around the barren floor of the basement. There were people around upstairs, cataloguing and searching for clues. From what your team could gather this was a Scarr safehouse, registered to a ghost alias. 

We’re going home soon.

It clicked.

“Johnson!” you shout. “I need a sledgehammer to clear out this basement!” 

 

“It was a kid,” you scream as you slam the crime scene photos on the desk. Fury was pounding in your veins at Lee’s nonchalance. He was just looking at the wall while pictures of a tiny skeleton sat before him. “Jamie wasn’t even a bodyguard. Why is a kid dead?”

“Are you angry about the dead body from twenty years ago or the implications?” Lee asked softly. He was always so soft. You hated it.

“I don’t even know what the implications are!” you scream at him. “You gave me two percent of a journal and a skeleton! Why were the pages just laying on the floor like that? Waiting for me?”

“Because I was preparing, of course,” Lee replied distantly. “Why are you more upset about pages from a six-year-old’s journal than a skeleton of a ten-year-old child?”

That slapped you in the face.

Lee was… Expressing anger. It was quiet, hard to see, but the distance? The cold calculation to lead you through his story? He was venting in a twisted way, manipulating you to let loose his own emotions and simultaneously free you from your own pain. He was toying with you, but it almost seemed like he was toying with himself more.

“Why did your hands feel funny?” you asked after a long silence, which you spent attempting to calm yourself down. It was the only piece that didn’t fit. Lee turned his face to look at you and were those… Fresh scabs? It looked like his cheek had been clawed. “Did someone attack you while you were in handcuffs?” you demanded.

“I attacked myself. And don’t you know? The most efficient way to make a monster is to rip away their innocence.” He seemed so mild, so detached, as though he were discussing the weather. “But you already knew that, didn’t you, agent?”

A stone settled into your stomach. It had been a fear swirling on the plane ride back, broiling up in your gut, but you didn’t want to even think about it. You knew your superiors were watching, that everything was recorded.

“Why did you scratch yourself?” you asked quietly, focusing on the matter at hand. And why did they let him?

“Scarrs don’t cry, agent,” he replied, training his eyes on the mirror behind you. “We express in ways we are permitted. You aren’t the only one in living psychological hell, after all.”

That confirmed it.

“You killed Jamie,” you stated flatly, trying to imagine a blonde-haired, chubby little kid pulling a trigger to kill their playmate. It was just like Sinister, but in real life.

“Coming of age ceremony, of course,” he responded, still gazing at the mirror. Victor must have been inside. “They hand you the gun and tell you to pull the trigger after a year of companionship to teach you firsthand you can never have anyone outside of blood. Does wonders for making sociopaths.”

You wanted to vomit. He finally ripped his eyes from the mirror and looked at you, blue eyes bright and piercing.

“Plan on continuing?” he murmured. The bastard knew. You looked right back into that terrifying gaze.

“Yes,” you answered thickly. Not that this truly would end the nightmare. You could already tell it would only make more, but it had to be done.


	3. 1995

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hint leads you to Boston. And in Boston you learn of stories of poison and pain.

You found the next journal in a loft with a stain on the floor. You could only imagine where the stain was from. The few pieces of paper were sitting there, neatly, all bundled up with a little red bow. He had left you a present. You could already feel your stomach churn as you picked them up with gloved hands.  
The rest of the team hung back. They knew they couldn’t raid the room until you were finished. Slowly, with trembling hands, you unwrapped your present.

 

December 2nd, 1995  
I remember saying I didn’t understand once. When I was little. (He still was little. He couldn’t have been more than seven. The thought made your heart hurt.) I understand now. What he must have felt like.

  
I mixed my first poison today. Papa said I had to test its potency, so I had to take it myself. I hate these parts of my tests. Bailey once told me other kids just fill out questions on paper for quizzes and don’t have any punishments if they get one wrong. I don’t think that’s true. Parents have to be upset over a missed question. Failure is not an option. They have to punish them somehow… Even a backhand, I would think. One backhand for one missed question.

  
Anyway.

  
The poison was a success. My vitals dropped and my temperature rose. As expected, my throat began to bleed. The antidote was also a success. We aren’t allowed to carry antidotes, but it was nice to have this once. Estimated time of death would have been six hours without a cure. If the target had something to slow it down, perhaps ten hours.

  
I’m going to bed now. My throat still hurts. I’m probably going to cough up blood all night.

 

Your eyes drifted down to the stain on the wood, the smear on the wall. You could track his movements… The little seven year old had taken the poison, waited patiently on the ground, and once it started to take effect, he had coughed up blood and stumbled over to…

A seven year old had written this. A seven year old had been forced to ingest a deadly poison. A seven year old had neatly filled out his symptoms and estimated what his time of death could have been. How little had he been? How small? You couldn’t imagine how wide and bright his eyes had been at this point. They were probably so hardened, so wary. And so obedient.

A scream ripped itself from your throat and you kicked over a nearby chair. This all had to be some elaborate hoax. Lee had to be making all of this up. There was no way a man could do this to his children. Lee had to have played some part in all of this. He had to be some kind of enabler. Maybe he faked these journals… Forensics said they were entirely genuine, but they had to be faked. They had to be.

Belatedly, you remembered your team was standing there. Staring at you. You turned and stared at them tiredly.

“Get these pages to the lab,” you ordered. There were more, but you didn’t want to read them. You couldn’t. “And test these stains. I’m going back to the hotel.”

You shoved the pages at a nearby forensics expert and stormed out of the room to the stairs.

Honestly, you didn’t know what scared you more. The possibility that this was fake or the fact that this was true. It made you want to poison your liver and never come back. Take a flight out to the Bahamas and open a bar far, far away from all of this. But it would still find you and you knew it.

With a shaky sigh, you leaned against the wall and ran trembling fingers through your hair. You didn’t want to talk to Lee. Didn’t want to accuse him or sympathize. He was a monster for putting you through this for his own self gratification. He was sick. You hated him.

Of course, you knew you couldn’t fully blame him. Who knew how long it had been since he had someone to confess to? Too long, of course. But it made you angry that it had to be you.

 _Selfish_ , you chastised yourself.

  
But were you? For being angry that someone had endangered your own personal health? You didn’t want to know these things. You didn’t need to know them. You just needed to put the killer behind bars.

  
_You signed up for this job_ , you reminded yourself. _It’s your duty to give an unbiased account._

  
But this made you biased. This made you want to save him.

  
He already saved himself.

  
The thought was shocking.

  
Lee Scarr had already saved himself. He had done it in a twisted way, but he had saved himself. And now he was just telling you why.

But why you?

Why you?

 

* * *

 

 

"Why did you pick me?" you asked Lee softly. He had been finally moved to a cell. You didn't see the point in pulling him out when you were asking a question unrelated to the case.

It didn't escape your notice that they had taken his blankets away. What the point of that was, you weren't sure. He could easily make himself a noose out of his clothes. Whatever helped them sleep at night, you guessed.

Lee looked over at you from his little cot... A cot without a mattress. This was almost ridiculous. You had no doubt he could kill himself or anyone else with anything in that room. The most he needed was a nail.

"Why would you ask such a strange question, agent?" he asked mildly. "Are you afraid you aren't as special as I let you believe?"

"No," you answered evenly. "I need to know why you would only work with me."

Lee smiled, a grotesque look on his scarred face, and stared up at the ceiling.

"Because," he said simply. "Your father is kind. Your siblings are normal and alive. You have everything I could have wished for. So you need to share my pain."

A stone settled in your gut.

"What do you mean, share your pain?" you asked lowly and he laughed.

"Look at you, so defensive and quick to jump to conclusions," he teased. "I'm not going to kill them and twist your father into a manipulative assassin, don't worry. You were just the best candidate to share my story with."

"That leads me to another question," you said, determined to not let him get the jump on you. "Is it a story? Or is it fact?"

Lee's one seeing eye locked on you.

"Isn't that a question for the jury to decide, agent?" he asked softly. "What they want to be true and what they want to be fiction?"

"But I'm asking you," you said stubbornly. He was trying to get under your skin, the sick fuck. "Is it true or not?"

Lee looked up at the ceiling and said nothing. He wasn't going to be saying anything for awhile. With a frustrated huff, you slammed out of the unit and left him in his silence.


	4. 1998

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mansion is still empty and you're starting to feel empty, too.

You remembered this place. You remembered the tall room, the ornate furniture, the fact that people refused to inhabit this tortured room.

They had repainted the walls to cover the blood, redone the flooring. You had never seen the body itself, only pictures, but it hadn’t struck you until now that it was a ten year old child that had done this.

The house hadn’t been looked at in over five years. It had been easy for Lee to sneak in and leave the next stage of his breadcrumbs on the table, neatly packaged and simply tied in twine. You studied them silently. No forensics team had come with you, no other agents. It was just you and the empty house with its vaulted ceilings and furniture covered in sheets to protect against dust.

The widow was going to have it knocked down soon. No one had bought it, and it was ridiculous to keep holding onto the place. You didn’t mind so much. The crime scene photos had been chilling, to say the least. No one would want to buy it, and the place had an air about it. People watched far too many horror movies nowadays. They knew better than to get the place.

You leaned over and picked up the papers, ignoring the gilded edges of the table and statue of a guardian angel looking over the journal like a saddened mother.

Lately, you had been wondering about Lee’s mother. His journals rarely mentioned her. Scarcely a name. You had to wonder if she still looked over him. Or if she had ever looked over her children. Perhaps her spirit was in the gargoyles of the churches and angels in the graveyards, like it was here, in the ornate angels staring down upon these yellowed pages.

You shook yourself from your thoughts. This room chilled you. It felt like violated innocence and cruel fates. The golden trappings and heavy red curtains made it feel like a cage. Lee had been raised into custom suits and poisoned cufflinks. It reminded you too much of the other journals.

You wouldn’t read it here. With a quiet sigh, you picked up the crinkled papers and walked out the door to your car, which sat in the long driveway. The rental could have been an escape from the chill, but you knew it would never leave your bones.

Starting up the engine, you rolled out, playing the radio loudly all the way to your hotel. You knew depression was setting in deep inside, but it had never really left. Your footsteps were heavy and leaden as you walked through the average lobby and took the elevator up to your room. The work phone in your pocket was overflowing with messages pressing you to end your interrogation, get Lee into the justice system, relinquish him to the courts, but you weren’t ready yet. Not yet. You still had things to do.

Once in the safety of your room, you poured yourself a glass to scotch and sat down with the papers, thumbing through for the precise date. There wasn’t enough energy in you to read the rest. Maybe later, when you were ready for the nightmares and tears that followed. Because, lately you had been crying a lot over these journals, considering breaking into forensics to burn them. Were they real? Were they false? You didn’t know. Couldn’t be bothered to care.

Sitting back, you found the right entry and prepared to read.

June 24th, December 1998

First kill today. Aside from Jamie. I didn’t want to drag it out. Papa hit me for it, but I guess I deserved that. Mum just stared at me and said nothing. I think she was disgusted in me for doing it. I don’t care. It’s not like I had a choice.

I just don’t care.

I managed to get the blood off, but Papa said I will have longer punishment later. He told me to clean up and present myself, but I have a few minutes to get it done.

There will be a party later. I think everyone else will approve. Only Papa can tell why I did it the way I did. And he won’t say anything. Everyone has high hopes for me. He doesn’t want me to be the embarrassment.

Guess I’ll just put on my smile and go then. Papa won’t punish so there’s marks. I know he won’t. I trust him.

I trust him.

The words rang over and over in your head. As usual, your gut twisted.

I trust him.

James had made his own child kill a man and then punished him for not dragging it out. Lee had been ten. And he trusted him still, despite the bitterness ringing in the piece.

This couldn’t possibly be real. This was all just a big lie. It had to be. An elaborate hoax. Maybe you were hallucinating. Maybe you were in a coma from when you had fell off the barn roof when you were eighteen and hit your head.

This had to all be a result of that.

It was beginning to occur to you that Lee was younger than you… No more than 27. He was a baby. Did he even know how a normal family worked, what Christmas was like, how to build a house or put a baby to sleep?

Did he know any of that?

You set the stack of papers down and turned your face aside to stare at the wall. Dimly, you remembered reading a short story in school called The Yellow Wallpaper. You knew how that woman felt now. The need to rip everything down because everything had a double meaning now. You knew what it felt to be caged.

Did Lee still feel caged, you wondered. Did he still feel locked away from the world, living in an eternal cycle of death?

But you couldn’t ask him those questions. He would only twist them around and manipulate you. Or give you the truth through ridiculous riddles.

**You needed more to drink.**


	5. 2000

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The jungle wasn't that bad, but you don't know why you feel so terrible.

You sat in silence. Lee had given you the location of a jungle in the middle of nowhere.  
You were running out of leeway with your superiors and it was weighing on you. All of this investigating was costing a lot of time and money, time that could have been spent putting Lee behind bars.  
At least you had the referral of several psychologists, who were all insisting that this was necessary and Lee could not be tried based on shady evidence. If Lee was to go through trial, all things would have to be taken into consideration, not just his deeds.  
And now you had this little journal. It didn’t make much sense. There was nothing too immensely violent in it. Just Lee learning how to work in an environment that wasn’t urban. Once more, you read over the pages.

March 10th, 2000.  
I’ve been here for several days and only just made it back to camp.  
But you already knew that, whoever you are.  
I’m tired.  
Dad had a friend waiting to meet me at camp, which was strange. I didn’t know Dad had friends.  
His name is Sam and I don’t trust his smile.  
Dad has been working with me on my off switch. I’m coming along. Slowly. I think Dad is losing his patience. He says stubbornness is a good trait, but if my subconscious can’t trust him to know what’s good for me, what am I doing?  
I’m not allowed to write down the location of the off switch. Just in case. People already know what I do, what I am, but off switches are a closely guarded secret. Or something like that. I don’t know.  
Sam is staring at me again. I wish he’d stop, but I can’t tell him off. He saw Dad and I while we were working on my switch.   
He makes my skin crawl.  
I don’t like it.  
I have to go.

You didn’t know which to be more confused about. This was mystery. Who was Sam? And what was an off switch?  
Did Lee have a spot on his body that made him turn off when he was fighting?  
With interest, you sat back and read the journal again.  
At least that would explain why Lee was an anomaly in the family. If every member only had to be touched, or spoken to, or whatever it was to be subdued, like this was hinting at, it would make sense that so few fled.  
Even so, this was a strangely peaceful journal for Lee to be laying around for him.  
You read it again.  
Sam makes my skin crawl, Lee had mentioned. Sam is staring at me again.  
What was Lee, twelve, at this point? Something like that. Why would this Sam be staring at him?  
You almost wanted to ask Lee. But nowadays you were avoiding him.  
“Agent,” one of your operatives said, a respectful distance away. “We have to go. A storm’s coming in and the pilot doesn’t want to get caught in a tropical typhoon.”  
You shook yourself and stood up, tucking the papers into your briefcase.  
“Right,” you said, but you were still worried. “Let’s go.”  
It was a bumpy flight back, but you didn’t seem to notice.  
I don’t like it.  
The words echoed over and over again in your head. For some reason, they made you sick to your stomach, and this was an incredibly passive journal. No children killing people. No abuse. No poisoning. It was nothing but Lee working through the jungle, and, for a twelve year old child, he had done pretty damn well on his own. Compared to the other things James Scarr had forced his son through, this was intensely mild.   
You had to talk to him.  
You had no other choice.

“Why did you give me this journal?” you asked him bluntly.  
Today he was in a straight jacket. You didn’t even bother to ask why.  
Lee Scarr looked terrible. Red rimmed eyes, dark circles, hollowed out cheeks. He seemed like he had lost quite a bit of weight during the time you had been avoiding him. His good eye fixed on you in silence, calculating, sizing you up.  
“I read a lot of novels, Agent,” he finally said, leaning back in his padded cell. He didn’t even have a cot. Somehow, you got the feeling he had tried to use the one he had used to kill someone. It would at least explain the straight jacket.  
As you stared at him, you couldn’t help but feel like he was losing his touch. He didn’t seem scary in the slightest today. Passive, yes, but not scary. Quiet. Withdrawn.  
It was like his armor was cracking and he knew it.  
“That doesn’t answer the question,” you finally replied after a long silence. He wasn’t making your skin crawl. He was making you want to hug him.  
“I think it does,” he finally said, softly. “Shall I give you the next location, Agent?”  
This felt like it was going nowhere, but you had no choice.  
“Sure. Give me the coordinates.”


End file.
